["Tang-ye Bencao" excavated from the Asakura family site].

Burnt fragments of a medical manuscript were excavated from the Asakura family site in 1985. From the study of the characters seen on the fragments, the following conclusions have been drawn: 1) The fragments are parts of a manuscript of the "Tang-ye Bencao", a book of materia medica written by Wang Haogut in the Yuan dynasty of China. 2) There is a high possibility that this manuscript of the "Tang-ye Bencao" was a faithful copy based on the "Dongyuan Shishu" edition published by the Xiongshi Meiyintang in 1508, during the Ming dynasty of China. 3) For all of the 36 fragments on which characters could be seen, a corresponding part of the Xiongshi edition could be found, and every character has been deciphered correctly. Assumptions were made about the characters and the corresponding parts of the Xiongshi edition for those fragments which could not be torn off. 4) For the latter part of the Muromachi period in Japanese history, a relationship was found between the acceptance of Chinese medicine through a group of books of the Xiongshi edition, the cultures of the Asakura family and the commercial town Sakai, and the activities of some intellectuals.